October is not just the month of Halloween celebrations, whose basic colors are black and orange. We know it is also Breast Cancer Awareness Month, whose symbolic color is pink. October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month, symbolized by the color purple. With that in mind, Skitter and I don some of our purple today to tell you about something called the PURPLE LEASH PROJECT. A huge number of domestic violence victims who have pets say a major reason they don’t leave an abusive situation is because their pets aren’t allowed to stay with them in domestic violence shelters. The PURPLE LEASH PROJECT is trying to help people and pets stay together to heal, by working to create more pet-friendly domestic violence shelters across the country. If you want to know more about how to help the situation, please visit PurpleLeashProject.com
TIE O’ THE DAY hopes you will reach out every day to do good in the world, in any way you can—for any causes that matter to you.
This photo is from a December 2018 visit we had with Mom at MCR. Leg lamp Tie o’ the Day is, of course, from my Christmas neckwear collection. Don’t be afraid! I’m not rolling out the X-mas ties quite yet. But I thought this would be an appropriate post picture for the Halloween season because it shows me with a truly creepy look on my face. Mom is happy, though, so what else matters?
Skitter’s showing off her ghost-and-owl Halloween Tie o’ the Day, while I am pleased to wrap a Day of the Dead-themed Bow Tie o’ the Day around my neck. I’m most proud to wear my “SPREAD EMPATHY” Face Mask o’ the Day. It’s a sentiment I completely believe in. I wholeheartedly recommend it to others.
During the pandemic, we have been good citizens about staying home whenever possible. I putter around in the piles of my poetry manuscripts, and through stacks of half-read books. Suzanne has spent most of her down-time with her coloring books. She hasn’t been as crochet-y or sew-y as in the past. She says nothing’s wrong: she just happens to be in a coloring phase—every pandemic evening after work. She swears coloring relaxes her, and I can tell that it truly does.
I do my best to make sure that she has every Sharpie marker color ever made, and I occasionally go online to hunt for interesting coloring books for her. I ordered QUARANTINE QUEENS for her a couple of months ago. It’s not as funny as it could have been, and a more accurate title would be PANDEMIC QUEENS. However, the coloring book does have a few clever gems, like this Suzanne-completed page showing a fitness tracker which has counted the wearer’s movement through the whole 23 steps traveled in a pandemic day. I realize that I myself probably haven’t taken a total of 23 steps in the entire time since mid-March, and I don’t feel a bit guilty about it. Every inch of my skin feels a little flaccid these days, but not a bit guilty.
Skitter wanted to show off her new candy corn Tie o’ the Day, so I dug around in the Tie Room’s closet o’ props to find my bigly candy corn Bow Tie o’ the Day. I don’t mind posing with Skitter for photos, but I don’t know why she thinks she has to lick my face every time I’m that close to her. She always has stinky breath, no matter how often I get the tartar chiseled off her aging teeth. Maybe I’ll commission Suzanne to make Skitter a teeny canine mask to wear when we’re doing bigly photo shoots—to help Skitter keep her icky breath to herself.
When we received our ballots in the mail, it was cause for celebration. We love to exercise our citizenship muscle by voting. Suzanne and I donned our patriotic Bow Ties o’ the Day. (Skitter wore her starry, starry Tie o’ the Day.) We placed our party hats atop our heads, and Suzanne went online to find the voter information to help us figure out whether the judges were worth keeping, as well as what all those Utah amendments were about. At one point, Suzanne’s face got a bit overwhelmed with trying to decipher the voter information.
I had promised Suzanne that our ballot-filling-out would be accompanied by only red, white, and blue food. I didn’t want to go grocery shopping yesterday, so I made do with what we had in the house already: RED cherry Twizzler pull ‘n’ peel licorice; BLUEberry muffins; and pork chops—”the other WHITE meat.”
We believe art is important to the vibe of a home as well as to our souls. When we’ve traveled to any new destination, art museums have often ended up being our fave sights there. For our home’s above-the-sofa art, Suzanne chose a print of Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss.” Cool-a-rama. I’ve had my Klimt-inspired Bow Tie o’ the Day for a couple of years, but Skitter only recently acquired her own Klimt-esque Tie o’ the Day. She wanted to show it off to y’all, and I caught her in mid-yawn.
This photo of Mom and my candy corn Bow Tie o’ Last October is a fitting tribute to the almost 90-year-old gal who is my mother, since she will be the first to tell you she is proud to be a witch. Every Halloween season, Dad reminded her to sharpen her broom, and she would assure him she had already done it, so he better straighten up.
I won’t be posting tomorrow, on Mom’s actual birthday, because I will be busy waving Merry Birthday to her through the Millard Care and Rehab windows. We plan to spend the day with her—masked and socially distanced from any others there to celebrate Mom’s milestone with her. Skitter has already picked out the Tie o’ the Day she’s going to be wearing for Mom to see.
I’ll shoot pix and take notes of the socially distanced, non-gathering gathering. I hope I can snap lots of photos of Mom in action, on the other side of the glass. Also, I’ll try to get a birthday card count. Y’all have sent Mom a boatload of cards and notes and even gifts. I thank you for playing a bigly part in Mom’s Contactless Pandemic 90th Birthday. I’ll blow Mom a kiss through the window, from y’all.
After Mom broke her hip in June of 2017, she could no longer live in her own home in Delta, so she moved to St. George with my brother, Ron, and his beautiful wife, Marie, for the next year. We brought Mom “up north” with us when we could, and she’d spend part of her “up north” time with my oldest sister in Pleasant View. We kids traded Mom back and forth like she was a fragile, prize baseball card we were trying to share with each other. (“It’s my turn to have her!”) But Mom was not done with her beloved Delta, and when a residence space opened up for her at Millard Care and Rehab in October of 2018, we were pleased and sad at the same time. Mom would be in a safe and happenin’ place for the final chapter of her long life, but she wouldn’t be having sleepover camp with her kids and grandkids anymore.
Ron and Marie were out of town being grandparents for a week when the MCR space opened up, so Suzanne and I were down at their house doing our Momsitting when we got word Mom needed to be checked in at MCR almost immediately. Suzanne and I helped Mom go through her St. George bedroom to make decisions about what she could move with her to her new digs. To say the whole process was tearful is to underplay the upheaval Mom was feeling. She knew it was time for her to make the move, but it was a huge and probably final move, nonetheless. We had all cared for her until she needed more care than we could safely provide.
That October morning we were packing up Suzanne’s SUV to move Mom from St. George to Millard Care and Rehab, I had to wake Mom up. She had a check-in time in Delta, and we needed to get on the road. As I woke her, I sat on the edge of her bed and explained, step-by-step, what we were doing that day. She said in all seriousness, “Well, I’m not going. I was quite restless in the night. I finally decided I’m not going to the care center, and then I fell asleep. I slept like a log.” I don’t know exactly what I said after that, but we talked and cried and talked some more. She got up and started to gather things together, but she had to choose which of her home-made porcelain dolls to take with her. She could not have them all in her new room. I told her we could trade them out occasionally, so she’d have them all—but only one at a time. Mom’s tears were fierce. I eventually went and got Suzanne, who was packing up the car, and said, “I need you to do one task right now. Help Mom choose a doll. We have to leave.” Suzanne was somehow successful. We eventually ended up in the car with Mom’s belongings, including one bigly doll. Skitter was in the backseat, by Mom’s side, from St. George to Delta. Mom petted Skitter the entire way. Again, we talked and cried and talked and cried, across all the miles of our journey. Gee, I’ve gone through some rough things, but this was the worst day of my life.
By the time Suzanne and I left Mom in her room at MCR later that day and headed back to Centerville, Mom was still a bit flustered. The saving grace was that she knew almost everybody in the place—residents and staff. Every one of them made a fuss over her arrival. She was already the Queen Bee of the prom. It wasn’t her home, but everybody was familiar.
I learned one thing that day we drove Mom to what will likely be her last earthly home. (Honestly, I already knew the thing. But, like any human being, I’m stubborn, so I had to re-learn it that day.) And the thing I learned is this: The right thing to do for someone you love is sometimes the most difficult thing you could possibly ever think to do. But you have to do it. Because you love them. And it’s what they need.
Damn it.
That’s why I was wearing my broken/bandaged hearts Tie o’ the Day. I knew it would be appropriate for our mission.
FYI I drove to Delta to visit Mom three days after we moved her to MCR, to make sure she was doing okay. She was already absolutely jubilant to be there. So many family members and friends were stopping by to welcome her, I only stayed with her two hours. Heck, I was in the way, and I had never been so happy to be in the way. I decided Mom’s best trick is to carry her contentment with her wherever she goes. We’d all feel better if we would do that.
Another FYI You can see Mom had already temporarily “lost” her sunglasses and her tooth on moving day, but you can also see she had her all-important clip-on earrings on her elderly earlobes. No matter how old one is, one must always wear something with a touch of class.
TIE O’ THE DAY brings you a selection of pix of Mom and Skitter during some of our visits with Mom at MCR. Mom has always been kind to all of God’s creatures—except ants, flies, mosquitoes, and mice, of course. Even so, Mom has never been a petter of anybody’s pets. But for some reason, Skitter and Mom hit it off, from the get-go. I’m sure it has a lot to do with Skitter being abused prior to her life with us. Mom’s got a whole diatribe she goes into about people who abuse animals, which usually ends with, “They oughta be shot.” Hey, you’ll get no argument to the contrary from me.
Anyhoo… Last week’s devastating winds here in Centerville were a thing to behold. The tree carnage was incalculable in Davis County. The damage to homes and cars was hit-and-miss, but homes and cars that did get hit, got hit bigly. Thankfully, our home was mostly missed. Skitter was the real victim of the winds, as far as our people and things are concerned. How do you explain the sound and feel of torrential wind to a mutt who is already chronically skittish from her previous abusive life? The power was out, so there was no cranking up music or the television to cover the sound of the storm. You have to understand that our tv is always on. When Suzanne and I are out of the house, we leave the television on for Skitter so she knows we’ll come. back home. Skitter is not stoopid. She knows if the television is on, I will definitely be back. When we go out of town and Suzanne’s sister stays here with Skitter, she knows the television is to remain on if she has to leave the house. It’s the law!
Anyhoo, again… With winds gusting into hurricane range, Skitter still had to go potty. Winds can’t prevent that need. I guiltily had to push her out the patio door. Out she went, into the bluster. She stared at me with eyes that said, “What did I do wrong?” I had to turn away. When I turned back to her, she was dutifully pottying—claws clutching the grass to keep her from being blown away in the awful wind. But I noticed something that made me feel relieved. Skitter’s pee was falling almost straight down into the ground. I immediately thought, “Skitter’s got this!” I knew for a fact Skitter had braved stronger winds in her life. We had spent tons of time at our tumbleweed ranch in Delta, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain. I had seen Skitter’s pee fly sideways in the winds o’ Millard County at least a half-dozen times, and it was dropping straight down in the once-in-a-hunnerd-years storm in Centerville. After all was said and done, and despite its wrath, last week’s storm o’ wild winds was just a hullaballoo of wimpy city wind trying to blow with the bigly winds o’ Delta, Utah!
On a daily basis, there are lots of things being said and done out in the world which Skitter and I find disappointing, chaotic, and generally not nice. We have chosen to live by a few truths that assist us in making our way through life relatively unscathed by the malarkey being so proudly spat by destructive hooligans we occasionally encounter in our realm. Chief among our values is KINDNESS. And one of the bigly truths of how kindness works is that the only way to live kindness is to share it. It is impossible to be a kind soul if you’re only kind to yourself. It is also impossible to be a kind soul if you don’t put kindness into action. Feeling kind, or thinking kind thoughts, is completely ineffective. You must share kindness, in order to keep yourself kind.
Anyhoo… On today’s Pandemic Hairs Thursday, I decided to reinforce to Skitter the value of KINDNESS. I asked her if she would share one of her new Ties o’ the Day with me. She was glad to share it. And I asked her if she wanted me to share some of my Pandemic Hairs o’ the Day with her. I mean—I have an excess of hairs I’m not using right now. She relished the idea of temporarily having long hair. Despite how miserable she looks in these photos, she was giddy. Skitter and I just sat around in the loveseat for part of the afternoon, sharing her ties and my hairs with each other. We both agreed that even simple, near-effortless acts of kind can enrich us beyond measure. To perform acts of kindness is a revolutionary idea.
Be kind, y’all. Commit to kindness. Kindness goes with whatever you’re wearing.
